


Fowl Language

by AnserAnser



Series: Fowl Play [1]
Category: Untitled Goose Game (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Comedy, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Fluff, Gen, Poor Life Choices, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22906306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnserAnser/pseuds/AnserAnser
Summary: The goose stares at him.Geralt stares back.The goose continues to stare, dark beady eyes on Geralt, only on Geralt; the bird edges slowly back towards a thicket and a pile of rocks. It curves its head, and honks invitingly. He’s never heard a goose honk that way before, and continues to wonder who or what he offended to make his life turn this way.Geralt doesn’t trust the bird, not as far as he can throw it, but he follows anyway, because he’s Geralt of Rivia, Witcher of the School of the Wolf.
Series: Fowl Play [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646470
Comments: 17
Kudos: 135





	Fowl Language

“Why the fuck does no one think to get out of the way of the horse,” Geralt complains to Roach. The mare’s ears flip back towards him, listening, and she lets out a whuff of agreement. This is the third village they’ve ridden through in as many days, and it seems that everyone forgets the size and momentum of a well-fed working horse, even moving slowly through the muddy rutted tracks of a tiny cluster of huts. He can’t count the number of people have nearly walked into Roach, or have seen them, and then deliberately stopped on the side of the road to talk with someone, or simply meandered idly into their way and then swore when they were ridden into.

This village, at least, is larger, and boasts an inn. It even has a name on a sign - Wolford - and that sets it a hunched head and shoulders above a lot of others in the area. Roach switches her tail as they amble towards the inn, and Geralt hopes there will be an available room and something decent to eat and drink. This place seemed bigger than most of the others - there were at least three roads, and if he was lucky there would be a noticeboard. Even luckier, a contract or two. He could use some coin; his pouch jangles dolefully, nearly empty.

And then Roach’s head draws up and back swiftly as the mare stops short, hopping back like a trained destrier. An indignant goose honks at her from its place in the middle of the road. Wings spread, the goose flaps them several times out and honks again, as if she’s intruded into its personal space.

“Fucking bird,” Geralt swears, and Roach gives the creature a wide berth with no additional urging needed on the part of her rider.

“Like to offer you a contract on that ‘un, Witcher,” a woman says as she hangs out tattered laundry on a bush to dry in the sun. “Bloody pest, that.”

“So why hasn’t anyone turned it into a festival offering?”

“Like t’ see you try,” she chuckles. “Think someone’s put up a contract t’ find the thing that’s been makin’ people disappear. But t’ goose?” She shakes her dark, stringy hair. “Goose be a whole different thing. Kikimora, drowners, they stays t’ themselves. Idiots get lost, think’s more likely t’ be wolves, or bears. But that goose…” She shakes her head. “Been here five, six years. Pain in the arse.”

“Long-lived goose if it’s such a problem.” He’s skeptical, wonders whose goose it is, why it hasn’t been roasted yet. Winters are hard in places like this, and a problem animal is usually first on the table. “Haven’t sold it off to someone?”

“Wee fuck’s hard t’ catch.” Her mouth hangs open, missing a few teeth. “We’ve all tried.”

Geralt turns and looks back at the goose, who is moving along, neck low to the ground and wings fanned out behind it like it’s got something to do, its own contract to fulfill. “Hmm.” He urges Roach towards the inn, considering. In the small space beside the inn, he dismounts and looks for a stableboy.

“We’ll get you settled,” he says to the mare, clapping her on the withers. “And then whatever the nicest thing they have on offer. Stay here overnight, maybe find a contract, sound all right?”

She snorts, bobbing her head, and does a full-body shake from nose to tail. She knocks into him affectionately with her head, mouthing at the bit. He scratches her face, the broad span between her eyes and just beneath her forelock.

It doesn’t take long before the jingle of tack - and potential coin - drew out a gangly pimple-faced youth to stable Roach, and Geralt could disappear into the inn. He arranges for a room, meals, Roach’s stabling and feeding, and a bath that evening.

“Good news, too,” the innkeeper says. “There’s a bard here, performin’ tonight.”

“A bard.” Geralt’s stomach twists unaccountably hard as the innkeep pours a mug of ale. If he’s lucky - if Melitele’s real, if he’s lucky, then -

“Geralt!” The voice is loud and cheerful and Geralt winces visibly as he turns away from the innkeep. He knows that voice, knows it all too well.

“Dandelion.” He’s not lucky. Or maybe he is; it’s someone he knows that isn’t Roach.

“I haven’t seen you in forever! How have you been!” Dandelion can’t speak in anything except exclamations, it seems; his joie de vivre is nauseating.

“Working,” Geralt says after a long, thoughtful moment. “Though I need a new contract. Heard of anything interesting around here? Nekkers, trolls…?”

“I wasn’t looking. I’ve been thinking of finding a topic for a new song cycle, something to keep me busy for a few months and then I can go back to civilization-“ Dandelion lowers his voice, looking around the inn almost nervously “-this place is just a stop on the way. But I heard stories about a mage trapped in a cave, or maybe a tower, somewhere, and then there’s always the potential…”

Geralt lets him talk, the innkeeper’s daughter not making eye contact as she hands over a bowl of soup, bread, and a mug of ale. He listens, letting it go in one ear and out the other. He turns most of his attention to the potato and bacon soup and half a loaf of bread in front of him. Dandelions talks. And talks, and talks, and talks, and all Geralt has to do is make the appropriate noises - mostly hmms, an occasional grunt - to keep up his end of the conversation.

“…Then I heard about the goose. Have you seen it? It’s this big monstrous beast, apparently steals things from people and no one’s quite been able to catch it.”

“Ran into it on the way in. Roach nearly stepped on it.”

“Roach! How is she, the lovely beast?”

“Tucked up in the stable, nice and warm and not being ridden hock-deep through swamps.”

And Dandelion begins to talk, and talk, and talk, again.

Geralt goes out after he eats, disentangling himself from the enthusiastic storytelling by suggesting rest his voice for the night’s performances. His eyes widen and he nods, and it’s far easier to escape to Roach in the stable and checks over his gear, take it all up to his room. He pauses. Something is missing.

The saddle, and bridle, and the saddle blanket and everything there should be, except -

Oh.

The knotted rope that usually fastens the latest trophy to his saddle is missing, and the trophy itself. He frowns, narrowing his eyes and looking around the small stable - four stalls, a ladder to a hayloft, a small space for stowing other feed and supplies. There are tracks on the floor in the dust, drag marks out one side of the stable, towards the forest. Geralt drops down on one knee, touches the floor, tries to pick out the layers of track to see what has taken the griffin head. Godling, maybe? Some kind of imp? It’s hard to tell - whatever it is, the footprints are small and covered over by the drag marks. He rises and follows the path out to the back. There - he sees the griffin head being hauled through rushes towards the lake. Geralt begins to run, trying to cover the space between himself and the griffin trophy and its thief.

There is a burst of wind, and he wonders if it’s some kind of creature he hasn’t encountered before, like a juvenile siren, or even some kind of creature which would go after the head of the griffin in lieu of the fresh horseflesh. Geralt lunges forward, snagging the griffin’s beak and yanking hard on it, lifting it into the air.

On the other end dangles a goose, flapping its wings indignantly. The bird lets go of the griffin trophy, honks loudly, and lunges for Geralt’s pant leg. He kicks at the bird, but it manages to avoid the blow, spreading its wings wide and honking repetitively.

“Fucking bird,” Geralt swears.

The goose honks, and then vanishes deeper into the rushes.

Geralt walks back to the tavern, and looks at the notice board, the tattered pieces of parchment and paper hanging on it. A request for trading a ploughhorse, a notice of seeking aid for building a new house, recruitment information for the local militia. And then, weathered with age and barely legible, he finds something. “Dead” is the only word he can read clearly, first - he tears it off carefully from beneath the construction request, holds it more clearly in the light.

 _Wanted: a Witcher or other brave soul to find out why Danel, Mirko and Petrus_ \- and in fresher ink, _and Mikhel_ \- _were murdered in the fields, torn to bits. Ask for Vasily for more details._

Well, that was certainly an option. Geralt looks at the weathered notice, wonders how long it’s been up, and folds it up to tuck inside his armor. The innkeeper should know who this Vasily person is, and it’s a lot easier than wandering through the muck and mud and perpetual snide comments and slurs from the villagers. Innkeepers are usually a bit nicer - they see the coin he carries more often, after all.

He’s about to ask the man in question when he hears Dandelion yelling his name.

“The goose, Geralt!” Dandelion points, indignant, mouth agape. “The goose just made off with my second-best doublet!”

“Dandelion, what the hell are you saying?”

“The goose! That damnable goose! It just stole it - I _saw_ it,” the man wails, fingers clutching at Geralt’s armor, “dragging it out of a window!”

“A goose cannot possibly steal a doublet, or a jerkin. You probably left it in the bed of whatever noblewoman you were with last. Not there seem to be any in this town, but-”

“I watched that blasted thing make off with it! The fowl thief - oh, there’s a title - that fowl thief made off with it, I saw it! Dragging it into the mud down towards the lake!”

Geralt looks at the bard, exasperated. “There’s no way a goose has the forethought to steal your clothing.” Then again, he’d seen the feathered bastard make off with a griffin-head trophy. Maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

Dandelion is nearly apoplectically purple as he gesticulates, wildly, towards the lake. Geralt sighs, pushing back from the table in the tavern. “Do I really need to go deal with this?”

“I cannot wear the same doublet at performances two days in a row, Geralt! I’m not some kind of-“

“Choose your words carefully, Dandelion,” Geralt says, making sure his two swords are in place on his back. With his luck, there will be a half-dozen drowners lurking at the edge and waiting for an idiot to come up unawares. “You’re the one asking me to go after a farm animal, after all.”

In ten minutes, Geralt is standing before the lake, crossing his arms. Dandelion’s doublet is floating a few meters off the shore, a malformed water lily of pink and green and what may be silver thread. It glitters, glass beads and little crystals catching the sunlight. There may not be any monsters here, but this thing is certainly a horror in its own right. Well, no matter how it got here, Dandelion _is_ his friend, so he’ll get it back.

Geralt looks around and finds a dead branch, and even though he has to wade into the water a bit, he manages to not have to entirely soak himself and go swim. It was probably village boys, he thinks - village boys are always bored, and anyone who looks as much a dandy as Dandelion is begging for harassment.

He has to wade knee deep into the algae-skinned lake before he can catch the floating fabric monstrosity with the branch, threading the tip through the neck of the doublet. He begins to pull the doublet out, backing out of the water slowly, sliding his feet rather than stepping so he does not fall. Feeling a more stable bottom beneath his boots, he turns, and suddenly there are great white wings in his face and the loudest HONK he’s ever heard. He leaps backward, ready to brandish a sword - which he has left on shore, since this was a fucking _doublet_ in a _village lake_ , not drowners or sirens off the coast of Ard Skellig - and his leap sends him past the shallows. He does not have a moment to get his footing before his head is under the water. It is only a moment - only a heartbeat, a breath, a blink, so he thinks - before he surfaces and strides angrily out of the lake, doublet clutched in his fist.

Inside the tavern, Dandelion is considering options for what to play that evening, what to sing. He tunes his lute, thinking, and hears the door of the tavern open. There is a squelching sound, heavy breathing, and Dandelion looks up at a creature muddy and dripping waterweeds. He has no idea what it is, and nearly shrieks - he restrains himself, as thedirt-ridden monstrosity reveals itself to be Geralt.

He drops the sodden garment in front of Dandelion at the tavern.

“Your fucking doublet.”

Geralt calls and pays for a private bath, and a tub is hauled up to his room, then slowly filled with buckets of water. It’s barely big enough for him to sit in - and certainly not at all comfortably. It’s almost perfunctory, but it’s enough to get the smell of several days on the road - and the smells of his earlier inadvertent bathing in the lake - off of him. After he’s bathed, Geralt pays extra for the local barber to come and give him a haircut and shave. It’s an extravagance, and one he probably shouldn’t be spending coin on, but given the day he’s had, he thinks it’s likely he’d end up worse off than he started. That is the story of his life.

“Geralt,” Dandelion says the next morning at breakfast. “I thought you’d seen the barber. Gone and had a shave and all that.”

“I did,” the man grunts. “Why?”

“Well, erm, I’m not quite sure how to phrase this, then. But you’ve still got a beard. And it… well.” The bard frowns, and sips from the mug in his hand. “It looks like someone glued it all on with tongs, while drunk.”

Geralt’s eyes narrow and he frowns in turn, reaching for his chin. It isn’t smooth like it was last night. His hands find the awkward brushy texture of his beard. He swears, vigorously and profusely, and Dandelion looks at him in a brief moment of awe.

“I didn’t know you knew words like that.”

“I’m a Witcher, Dandelion. I know a lot of things. Just because I don’t wave them around all the time doesn’t mean I don’t know them.”

Dandelion frowns slightly. “You’re not going to walk around like that, are you?”

“No. I’m going to get some vodka.” Geralt pushes back, standing.

“Isn’t it a bit early for that? Even for you?”

“To remove the glue, Dandelion. External application, not internal.” Though that’s tempting as well.

It takes only a few minutes’ work after he’s scrubbed the glue and hair off his face to find Vasily, as it turns out the man is one of the more prosperous farmers and his home is well-known. Geralt knocks on the door and an older woman opens it, dressed in heavily mended but once-fine clothing. She’s gone grey and sun-wrinkled and the annoyed twist of her lips makes her look like she doesn’t have time for anybody’s shit. Geralt immediately thinks he’s found a kindred spirit.

“I’m here about the notice,” Geralt says, as politely as he can manage into the woman’s stony cold eyes. “About-“

“VASILY,” the woman bellows in a surprisingly loud voice, the sort you’d expect at an auction or from an army officer. “SOMEONE’S HERE ABOUT THE NOTICE.” She turns back to Geralt, eyeing him critically. “He’s deaf. Or at least he is for his wife.” She sniffs again in irritation. “Might as well come in. It could take awhile.”

It doesn’t take as long as Geralt expects; the notice has been up for several months, but it’s the fourth time it’s been rewritten, as bleached by sun as it gets, and “not many folk come through Wolford anyway”. The story is fairly simple - they own a field that abuts the forest, and a number of the men who worked it have died over the past four years. They have no idea why - but now no one works that part of the field, it’s been left to go wild, but only a few weeks ago another man was found there, dead.

Geralt has a sneaking suspicion he knows what it is already, but he agrees to the contract, negotiates payment, and is off to the field before the sun is high in the sky.

The field would be pretty if it wasn’t being fed on blood, the stalks of wheat and rye waving in the breeze. As it stands, there’s a well-trodden path out towards the forest that skirts Wolford, and he’s tempted to investigate later and see if there are any wolves still remaining. Time really does stop in these little places.

He grunts irritably, dropping to one knee and looking at the area, using his witcher-heightened senses to seek out any sign of what might be bothering the field. He already had a sneaking suspicion - the disappearances were in the day, not the night, and the eponymous wolves would have been spotted taking livestock, or by field hands and locals. He wrinkled his nose, standing, and paced around the area of the field. Something was here - ah.

There it was, a finger, poking out of the dirt. He knelt down again, used his belt knife to scrape out some of the earth around it, and uncovered more of a hand, , the bones falling loose as he dug. He didn’t have a shovel - he’d have to come back with a cloth for the bones, burn them and the object of whoever she’d been, whatever had been taken and was keeping her spirit tethered.

He scrapes away the rich earth a little more, finds the outline of the skeleton, and makes a mental note of it. It doesn’t take long to walk back to the village, and he finds the man who posted the notice.

“There’s a body,” he says bluntly. “I don’t know whose, but I have a suspicion. Was there a woman who was supposed to get married and didn’t? Maybe didn’t show to her wedding, or something happened on the wedding day afterwards…?”

He returns to the house of Vasily and Wioletta to give an update on his investigation into the death of the men. Both look stricken at his report of a noonwraith, and his patient explanation of what one is. They look - horrified.

“A girl?”

“On her wedding day?”

“Marjane,” Wioletta says, her voice so quiet and thin it would make Geralt’s heart break if he had one. “They said it was wolves.”

“Who said?” Geralt’s voice is sharp and cold.

“Our daughter, Marjane. She was married five years back to a man two villages over. Love,” Vasily said, “but he had coin and a good carter’s business in the family. Marjane and her man were riding back through the forest with an escort, some of the boys from here.” He swallows once, heavily. “The ones whose names were listed. The hands. They came back all bloody and cut, said it was bandits in the forest, killed Marjane and Serg and Aleks, another one of the hands.”

“I don’t think it was wolves,” Geralt says, his stomach sinking. It’s easy for him - but all he sees is the shit end of the stick. He’d bet the hands wanted the wedding-cart full of gifts and coin, and easy to blame it on bandits.

He manages to ask if they have any tokens of her, or what she might have had that would keep her tied to the site of death. They profess not to know. Then Vasily makes a suggestion.

“If it was anything - it’d probably have been taken by the goose.”

“The goose.” Geralt stares at Vasily in disbelief.

“Yeah. The nasty one, the thievin’ one.”

“You’re saying…”

“The goose collects all kinda things. You want somethin’ small, likely that fucker stole it.”

“Where does your goose keep its…” Geralt can’t keep the dismay and distaste from the curl of his lips, “hoard?”

“Dunno. Usually stops and attacks anyone followin’ it.”

Geralt sighs. He’s going to have to lure out the goose with something worth stealing and follow it. This is, undoubtedly, the most absolutely fucked up thing he’s ever dealt with. And given King Foltest and the striga, that’s saying something. He stalks back to the inn and orders a ploughman’s lunch, tearing into the fresh bread as he considers what he can coax the bird with. He’s also going to need to make sure he has enough specter oil for the noon wraith. Better to be safe than sorry.

First, he tries a pile of cracked corn. The village geese descend upon it en masse, and he can’t tell if the goose he’s after is part of the flock. They vanish back to their fields and gardens once the corn has been consumed, and he dusts his hands off. There may be one or two that stare at him, offended; he follows one of them, and then the other, but they don’t lead him back to any hoards of stolen things. One stares at him balefully as it walks around a corner, and he gives it a moment’s lead before following.

He regrets his choice as he steps into a slick pile of goose shit.

His second attempt is not an attempt at all, but observation. He’s leaning on a fence post, watching a small flock of the village’s geese parade through a garden, when he hears a shriek from down by the river that bounds Wolford on one of its other sides. He’s off at a lope, a ground-eating pace even he can’t sustain for very long, and stops short at the sight of a boy in his underdrawers fumbling his way out of the water, trying to catch a goose. That goose is in turn trying to make off with what looks like a young lady’s dress, a hefty burden for that waterfowl. Geralt looks around quickly for the young lady in question and sees her neck-deep in the water, the fabric of a chemise floating up around her in the river’s current.

The boy snatches the dress back, and the goose flaps its wings and begins to drag off a pair of boots. The boy drops the dress in turn and begins to lunge for the boots, and the goose grabs one of the dress’ ribbons in its beak and attempts to make off with it. The dress is dragged until the boy can grab the hem and snatch it back, but not before the goose manages to wriggle the ribbon loose, making off with it at a rapid waddle across the field.

“It’s okay, Lada. I’ll get you a new one when the next peddler comes to town,” the boy says consolingly to the girl. Her eyes are wide and her face is red and streaked with water, and Geralt can’t quite decide if she’s more horrified at being caught out by an adult in her chemise in the river with a boy, or by the loss of the ribbon. He’s never been good with people.

Geralt just looks at them both, shakes his head, and follows the goose from a distance.

“Goose.” Geralt’s voice carries amongst the trees. He is surprised to find this little oxbow lake - but not at all surprised to see it’s where the goose hides out. There’s ample tree cover, and a small stream that exchanges water; fish, reeds, just about everything a goose could want.

When he speaks, the goose suddenly flaps its wings, honking loudly, and charges him.

Geralt has never before been charged by a goose in quite this way before. It’s not frightened - it’s… _offended_? He frowns, and quickly gets out of its way. He can’t decide if fighting this thing would need steel or silver - nothing like this was ever in any of the Witcher bestiaries he memorized, nothing like this in any tales told around the winter nights at Kaer Morhen, or anywhere else for that matter. The goose lunges for him, snapping its beak again, heavy wings fanning.

“I need - fuck, what am I _saying_ \- I need your help, Goose.” The words have to be forced out, like most of his conversations with Yennefer. “There’s a body in one of the fields, and it would have been a girl who died some years ago. She’d’ve had something with her, and town gossip says you’re the one who takes everything.”

The goose pauses, drops its head down, and looks momentarily hysterically funny with the odd curvature of its long neck. Geralt resists the urge to laugh, because his life has already gotten so low that he’s asking a fucking goose for assistance. He keeps a straight face, or the best he can manage.

The goose stares at him.

Geralt stares back.

The goose continues to stare, dark beady eyes on Geralt, only on Geralt; the bird edges slowly back towards a thicket and a pile of rocks. It curves its head, and honks invitingly. He’s never heard a goose honk that way before, and continues to wonder who or what he offended to make his life turn this way.

Geralt doesn’t trust the bird, not as far as he can throw it, but he follows anyway, because he’s Geralt of Rivia, Witcher of the School of the Wolf.

When Geralt stands beside the goose - a neck’s length away - the white bird is standing with its wings spread wide. It looks up at him and then almost coyly folds its wings down, a woman revealing her assets - or a thief revealing his hoard. There’s a pile of things, looted from only the gods know where and when, tangled up in a mass. It’s a motley assortment, the sort of thing collected over a dozen years or more - or perhaps a shorter span for a particularly aggressively inquisitive goose. Geralt eyes the goose, pulls his steel sword, and begins to poke through the hoard. The goose stretches its neck out, begins separating things.

“Noonwraiths always have an item they’re attached to,” Geralt tells the goose, and it eyes him as if it understands, curving its neck a bit. He’s anthropomorphizing this thing - between the goose and Roach, he realizes, he’s got a terrible social life. “This was a young woman, disappeared on her wedding day, so it’s going to probably be some token from her family or her lover.” The bird nudges some things aside - frames that would have gone around eyeglasses, belt knives, and the like - and begins to pluck out pieces of jewelry, dragging them out with its beak into a new pile.

“I’m a little disturbed,” the Witcher says, “by how much of this shit you’ve accrued.”

The goose honks - he’d call it indignant if it wasn’t, well, a goose. Wings fanning, the goose honks again, walks over the pile of treasures, and snaps at Geralt’s trousers. He swats at it with the flat of his blade.

“If you’re the reason there’s a noonwraith here…” he trails off. “I wouldn’t be surprised, frankly.”

The goose ruffles its feathers, snaps at the empty air, and then continues to extract items from the pile. Rings, a thin gold bracelet, a belt knife with a gem-studded hilt. Then something catches his attention - a thin gold chain with a locket attached, dirt caked into the design worked into the exterior. Geralt reaches down, picks up the locket and lets it dangle off his gloved fingers. The goose seems to reach for it, nudging it with its beak, making the locket swing.

“Yeah, I think you’re right. This one.” He puts his sword back into its sheath, pulls out the small belt knife he keeps, chips away some of the dirt from the side seam until he can open it. He blows the dirt off as he worries it out. The goose stands, craning its neck, to see what he’s doing, almost getting in between his legs, under his feet, to observe. It takes a few moments of worrying at the ingrained dirt before Geralt can gently separate the sides. Inside is a tiny snippet of blonde hair, and Geralt closes the locket. Probably it.

“Okay, bird.” A honk, a nip at his calves. “Goose. Let’s go do this, then.”

The goose makes a contented honking sound, and begins to waddle back towards the field.

Geralt realizes he’s never seen it fly.

Fighting and banishing the noonwraith is almost an afterthought, given everything it’s taken to get to this point. Geralt takes the shovel and oil-soaked cloth, digs up Marjane’s skeleton and lays it on the cloth with as much respect as he can manage. She probably didn’t initially want to become a wraith - but her vengeance on the boys, now men, had unintended consequences. He lays the locket down in amongst her bones, closing the fabric over itself into a neat parcel. He coats his blade in specter oil, and then moves his hands to cast Igni; the morbid package bursts into an ironically cheerful flame. The keening comes only moments later.

“Marjane,” he calls into the night, in the face of the wraith, “it’s time for you to leave.”

His fingers move to form Yrden, trapping her in a corporeal form, long enough to kill her. It doesn’t take him very long, moving quickly in the twists and pirouettes drilled into his muscle and bone by Vesemir, to kill the noonwraith and relieve the villagers of Wolford of their curse. He thinks with satisfaction about the purse he’ll get - not much, but it will be more than he came into town with. He’ll at least be able to leave the villageand not have to know what happened in that corner of the field, not have to look at it every day.

The next morning, he makes his final visit to Wioletta and Vasily, reports back on the noonwraith. They hand him a pouch of coin, and he walks back to the inn, ready to make his farewell to Dandelion (a quick one, as fast as he can manage, lest the troubadour decide to accompany him). The troubador is nowhere to be found, so Geralt writes a note and leaves it in the care of the innkeeper.

Geralt takes his time to saddle up Roach, making sure everything is properly secured. He leans across the mare’s rump to fasten the trophies back on where they should go, feels the empty saddlebags, and frowns. He turns to Roach and slaps her once on the neck. “I need to get some supplies, and then we’re out of here. And not a minute too soon.” He leads the mare out in front of the inn, letting her warm up in the sunshine, and loops her reins loosely over a bar.

He enters the inn, intending to pay off the last of the bill, and get some provender for the next few days on the road. He spends half an hour playing gwent instead, finding out now (why only now?) that the innkeeper and an itinerant peddler both play.

When he walks back out with an armful of food and a lighter coin purse, Roach is standing not quite where he left her. The bulk of the white goose is tucked atop the griffin trophy.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Geralt approaches Roach and the goose, eyes flashing. He is profoundly, deeply, concerned. It’s the same sort of feeling as when he realized what he’d gotten from the Law of Surprise, a stomach-churning unpleasantness and the feeling that suddenly everything is absolutely going to go to shit, quickly. The goose is looking down the road, out of Wolford.

“Oh, no. No, you’re not fucking tagging along, I can’t handle that-“

“Geralt?” Dandelion’s voice, coming from an upstairs window. “Geralt, are you leaving so soon?”

“HONK,” says the goose, and flaps its wings once, hard. The sound and movement startle Roach - almost, Geralt thinks, as if the damned goose _knew it would_ \- and Roach, in her startlement, begins to canter down the road, the goose swaying contentedly on the knotted ropes around the trophies, looking at the road beyond Wolford.

“Well, fuck.”


End file.
